Guide to the Presidential Candidates’ National Security Positions

As we have periodically done since its February launch, we’re updating our guide to the 2016 presidential candidates’ positions on national security matters. Today, we have streamlined the guide to include only the presumptive candidate of each major party: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. We’ve also made a handful of other updates based on their recent speeches and statements. As before, we’ll continue to update the information about the candidates’ positions as we approach the general election.

This guide features sources for each summary and, whenever possible, cites official government websites or the candidates’ websites. In our research, we relied on their own statements and records rather than commentary on the candidates’ positions.

Many of the issues covered by this guide are incredibly complex — deserving of far more than just one or two sentences in a press release or campaign sound bite. As we do in our posts, events, and other projects, we will do our best to ensure we present their positions fairly and with nuance.

We’d also like to thank Just Security’s Assistant Managing Editor, Megan Graham, for managing this project, John Emerson for designing the interactive elements of the guide, and Yashasvi Raghuveer and Isha Mehmood for their invaluable assistance researching the guide’s initial content.